A RETAIL SUCCESS STORY: How one Sacramento retailer played it just right with QuickBooks Retail Software Solutions and their Certified QuickBooks Point of Sale ProAdvisor.

In 2005, Paul and Laura West left the corporate world to become the first independent resellers of Carvin guitars and audio equipment. To help assure success in their retail venture, the Wests turned to QuickBooks Retail Software Solutions and to Steve Green, a Certified QuickBooks Point of Sale (POS) ProAdvisor, to help them implement it. The Wests were looking for a package that, in Paul's words, would be a "complete, seamless and no headaches solution." Most important, it had to be up and running in less than a week.

QuickBooks Retail Software Solutions was an Easy Choice
Paul and Laura were attracted to QuickBooks Retail Software Solutions because of its affordability and ease-of-use. To them, it made sense to replace their cash register with a system that could track inventory, sales and customer information and provide them with the kind of reports that would help them manage their business and serve customers better.

• QuickBooks Point of Sale (POS): Pro and POS hardware for ringing up sales and managing inventory
• QuickBooks Premier Retail Edition for managing financial data and making it easier to work with their accountant
• QuickBooks POS Merchant Service for processing credit and debit cards
• A Certified QuickBooks POS ProAdvisor to help deploy the system

The Wests considered solutions from other vendors, but Laura, in particular, was drawn to QuickBooks because she had had good experiences using QuickBooks Online Edition with a church group she belongs to. After asking retailers and accounting professionals about their experiences and recommendations and performing extensive research online QuickBooks was the clear favorite.

Steve Green came in to Carvin to set up the Point of Sale solution and the QuickBooks software, then trained Laura in how to use it. After just a few days of working with the system, she was able to train her sales associates. "It's so simple to use, training just wasn't an issue," said Laura.

QuickBooks Ease-of-Use Streamlines the Grand Opening
On opening day, Carvin Sacramento had so many customers lined up to get in, they had to admit them in waves of 20. "It was standing room only a total madhouse," said Paul. "Still, everything went off without a hitch." Now that the store is up and running, the Wests find themselves relying more and more on QuickBooks to help them gain insights into their business and make better decisions. "I love the reports," Laura explained. "I use them all the time to find out how the business is doing and to help keep track of inventory." Paul, who concentrates on sales, finds that the customer history and sales reports generated by POS help him be a more effective sales manager.

Building Efficiencies into the Business
The Wests also find that QuickBooks Retail Software Solutions offers a number of timesaving features. They like how they can set reorder prompts to remind them to generate and email a purchase order to vendors. They also plan to use the database of customers they're building to send out targeted direct mail to promote new products and special offers.

QuickBooks also makes it easy for the Wests to work with the accountant they hired to handle their accounting, bookkeeping and tax needs. "When I told our accountant that we have QuickBooks, she was thrilled," Laura said. QuickBooks makes it so easy to exchange financial data via email that they rarely have to meet face-to-face. "With file exchange working so smoothly, there's just no reason for my accountant to come here."

Plenty of Room to Grow
QuickBooks Retail Software Solutions has not only met the Wests' needs, it has exceeded their expectations for trouble-free operation. Paul is especially impressed with the seamless integration. "With QuickBooks Premier Retail Edition, POS software, POS hardware, and QuickBooks POS Merchant Service all working together so well, we can spend time running our business, instead of worrying about our accounting software," he said.

With Carvin Sacramento achieving better-than-expected sales, the Wests are planning to expand to an additional location. And when they do, the QuickBooks POS modular design will enable them to upgrade to QuickBooks POS: Pro Multi-Store and link their second store for another successful opening day.

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Accounting Professional Leverages POS to Achieve Practice Growth

Steve Green
Certified QuickBooks POS ProAdvisor
Campbell, Benn & Taylor
Sacramento, California

Five years ago, Certified QuickBooks POS ProAdvisor Steve Green recognized the opportunity to use POS as a way to grow his practice. Today, POS is his largest niche. And clients keep calling.

Certified in both QuickBooks financial software and POS, his profile gets great visibility on the Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor Referral Database. While some accounting professionals support only a small number of POS clients, Steve's dedication and persistence have helped him build a practice around serving retailers like Carvin Sacramento.

With so much success, it's not surprising that Steve also encourages others to get into POS consulting. "QuickBooks POS is a huge and fast-growing piece of my practice. I can't believe the amount of growth that's occurred in the last six months. There are enough people using POS to justify building a piece of your practice around this."

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